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Laws, schools and privacy

Perhaps the most significant lesson for state and federal legislators to be gleaned from the Virginia Tech tragedy is the need for a reappraisal of privacy laws affecting schools. These laws requiring schools to keep confidential virtually anything about a student from virtually everyone except the student or those specifically authorized by the student have diluted the common-law rule of in loco parentis, which held that the school acts in the place of the parent while the student is at school and is, essentially, a partner with the parent for the best interests of a student ("Gun control for psychotics?" Commentary, Saturday).

What happened in Blacksburg was an unintended consequence of laws designed to protect the privacy of students in parental divorce situations, birth-control and abortion decisions, academic grade problems and other intrafamily disputes. Society's attitude, mostly shaped by the courts beginning in the 1960s, is that children should be treated as adults. This also conditioned the push for privacy laws touching the school. The laws generally were supported by school people who saw them as protection against civil litigation and relieved them of the sometimes difficult and often fractious task of contacting parents or guardians of problematic students.

These privacy laws cry out for a clear exemption in cases in which mental illness is diagnosed or reasonably suspected that could impel the student to do violence to himself or others. In those circumstances, the school should have the duty to disclose the illness to the student's parents or guardian without fear of retaliatory litigation. That would provide the student's family with the advance notice that reasonable parents would want and need to take some sort of immediate remedial action.

At the university level where the student may be 21 years or older, the exemption still should apply as a matter of implied contract between the adult student and the university. This is necessary because of the unique nature of the university as a place of intense mental pressures on students who face up to their own intellectual shortcomings or emotional immaturity, often with disastrous impact on their psyches.

What is needed is an enterprising reporter thirsting for a Pulitzer Prize to review the practical impact of state and federal privacy laws affecting schools to inspire and motivate a federal or state legislator to seek a thorough legislative review of the privacy laws and amend them. That would be a real step forward to prevent a reprise of the Virginia Tech tragedy.

THOMAS A. SHANNON

Executive director emeritus

National School Boards Association